The spellcasting looks a bit dull, he mostly kills everything by rolling back and using that one bolt spell. Did DS have more interesting options at higher level? Or is melee the way to go with this game?

From the sounds of it, magic and miracles have been toned down a bit in Dark. You can no longer farm spices to boost your MP when it runs out so you can cast more spells - I think you can only cast spells a limited amount of times between bonfires. In Demon's, playing as an all-out mage made quite a bit of the game a lot easier, and you missed out on the melee combat which it one of the best things about the game.